(2014) “Understanding Iran’s Green Movement as a ‘movement of movements.’” Sociology of...

sociology of islam 2 (2014) 144-177

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Understanding Iran’s Green Movement as a ‘movement of movements’

Navid PourmokhtariUniversity of Alberta

[email protected]

Abstract

This paper examines how oppositional groups go about exploiting opportunities to mobilize en masse in settings that are less than auspicious. The Green Movement is used here as a case study, the aim of which is to show that understanding how a people go about mobilizing requires, first and foremost, examining the core beliefs that motivate them to seize opportunities when conditions allow. To this end, a con-structivist approach will be used to demonstrate that it was the oppositional forces that took a proactive role in constructing opportunities to mobilize because they perceived the circumstances to be favorable, which suggests that greater attention ought to be focused on the sociopolitical and historical context within which a given situation is viewed as conducive to mass mobilization. Citing the examples of the student and women’s groups involved in Iran’s Green Movement, and tracing their historical trajectories and particular experiences during Ahmadinejad’s first term (2004–2008), I argue that the Green Movement may be best described as a ‘move-ment of movements,’ the kind of mega social movement capable of harnessing the potential, not only of Iranians but of other Middle East peoples, to mobilize with a view to pursuing specific social and political goals. This approach has the virtue of offering a way to understand specific traits of social movements operating in repressive settings.

Keywords

constructivism – political opportunity structure – political process theory – political opportunities – perceived opportunities – student groups – women groups – Iran’s Green Movement – movement of movements

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Introduction

In June 2009 there appeared on the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities something unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic: dispa-rate social groups engaged in largely spontaneous forms of collective action, and on a scale not witnessed since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The so-called ‘Green Movement’ had erupted upon the scene.

So sudden an outpouring of popular fervour took most political commenta-tors and policy makers, indeed, the world at large, by surprise. The question to be addressed here regarding this phenomenon is one of how very large num-bers of ordinary Iranians succeeded in mobilizing in a fashion as spectacular and unheralded as it was unprecedented. Addressing this question requires engaging with a historical enquiry that lies at the very heart of social move-ment studies, one focusing on how oppositional groups exploit opportunities to mobilize en masse. In various dominant strands of social movement studies, e.g., those descending from Alexis de Tocqueville, mass mobilizations are thought to “emerge as a result of [incipient or] “expanding” political opportu-nities” (Goodwin and Japer, 2004: 5) that reveal “the vulnerability of the state to popular political pressure” (Kurzman, 1996: 153). This central premise has led theorists to focus primarily on the “state or the polity as the only field of strug-gle that really matters” with respect to mobilizing the masses (Goodwin and Jasper, 2012: 15).

In the Iranian context, however, this fetishization of the state as an entity providing social movements with openings and opportunities to mobilize is highly problematic given that the Green Movement emerged and took shape in the context of a repressive state that had historically proved most adept at denying its opponents scope for any kind of subversive action. Thus, in the case of Iran, open opportunities for mobilization might best be described as “highly restricted or uncertain” (Beinin and Vairel, 2011: 8).

What I am suggesting is that in June 2009 the Islamic Republic was hardly so feeble as to present oppositional groups with a window of opportunity to mobilize; thus, in no way did the latter take to the streets in response to incipi-ent ‘political opportunities.’ Rather, what I aim to show here is that in order to grasp how a people go about mobilizing, we need first to examine the core beliefs that motivate them to seize opportunities—opportunities they must themselves create. To this end, a constructivist approach will be used with a view to demonstrating that it was the oppositional forces that took a proac-tive role in creating opportunities to mobilize when the circumstances were perceived to be favourable. This suggests that attention might be more profit-ably focused on the sociopolitical and historical context within which a given

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situation is viewed by oppositional elements to be conducive to mass mobilization.

Citing the examples of student and women’s groups that made up the van-guard of the Green Movement, and tracing both their historical trajectories and experiences during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first term (2004–2008), I shall argue that the Green Movement may best be described as a ‘movement of movements,’ a mega social movement that illustrates the potential of Middle East peoples to mobilize with a view to pursuing specific social and political goals. This approach has the virtue of offering a way to understand the specific traits of social movements operating in inauspicious settings.

I shall begin by interrogating the foundational assumptions of the two hegemonic theories informing social movement studies for whom political opportunities constitute the prime mover of social movements: political opportunity structure and political process theory. Next, I analyze the consti-tutional character of the Iranian state as well as its political situation in the four years leading up to 2009 election, all with a view to establishing that the country was relatively stable politically as well as secure in terms of its geopolitical position at the very moment the Green Movement emerged. I shall then delineate a constructivist approach to be used to articulate the desire on the part of the Iranian people for substantive change. Articulating that desire will reveal how oppositional groups came to perceive opportuni-ties for mobilization and to imagine themselves empowered to affect change even under the most inauspicious circumstances. Most importantly, the expe-rience of student and women’s groups in the months leading up to the 2009 election will be analyzed with a view to elucidating how, in light of the presi-dential campaigns fought by the leading progressive candidates, Mir-Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, they came to perceive an unprecedented oppor-tunity for bringing about change. Lastly, drawing on the experience of these two groups, I shall delineate what I view to be the key attributes of a ‘move-ment of movements.’

Dominant Theories Informing Social Movement Studies: Political Opportunity Structure and Political Process Theory

In the field of social movement studies few theoretical approaches command as much authority as political opportunity structure (pos) and its recent off-shoot, political process theory (ppt). Shaped by social movement theorists of the stature of the late Charles Tilly, the late Mayer Zald, Doug McAdam, and Sidney Tarrow, both are “currently the hegemonic paradigm[s] among social



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movement analysts,” informing the field’s “conceptual landscape, theoretical discourse, and research agenda” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004: 3–4).

pos rests on the premise that social movements emerge in response to incipient or expanding political opportunities (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004). In this schema, the actors’ trajectory, wisdom, and creativity, along with their conscious choices, i.e., their agency, and the outcome(s) of those choices, can be understood and evaluated by referencing “the rules of the games in which those choices are made” (Meyer, 2004: 128)—that is, their structure, under-stood as “factors that are relatively stable over time and outside the control of movement actors” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004: 4). In other words, “people join in social movements in response to political opportunities” (Tarrow, 1994: 17–18), conceived specifically as “dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action” (Tarrow, 1994: 85).

The more recent ppt incorporates into the pos concept of ‘political oppor-tunities’ additional factors that are, among other things, social, organizational, and cultural in character. Nonetheless, in focusing primarily on the narrow pos concept of structural/political openings, it differs little from its predecessor in advancing a “chimerical general theory” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004: 17).

But what, one might ask, constitutes an ‘opening of political opportunity’ sufficient to provide a window for collective action? In a seminal edited work entitled Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, Doug McAdam (1996: 26) presents what has come to be viewed as a “highly consensual list of dimen-sions of political opportunity”— or ‘political opportunity structures’ as they are commonly referred to—that are used to “explain[] [a social movement’s] emergence” (Pereira, 2012: 63). According to this luminary, three broad struc-tural factors are of the paramount importance “in sparking contentious epi-sodes that may develop into social movements” (Beinin and Vairel, 2011: 5), ultimately exposing the susceptibility of the state to certain “popular political pressures” (Kurzman, 1996: 153): 1) access to a political system, which reflects the degree of its openness; 2) intra-elite competition and/or elite allies who encourage or facilitate collective action; 3) a declining capability on the part of the state to repress oppositional movements (McAdam, 1996). These three structural factors have been joined recently by a fourth, namely external fac-tors, broadly understood as international/geopolitical pressures, that can pro-vide “favorable conditions” or “open[] up … opportunit[ies]” for a movement to emerge (Markoff, 2012: 53; see also McAdam, 1996).

It is thus apparent that both models adhere to a universal framework wherein political opportunities capable of triggering mass mobilizations are viewed metaphorically as “‘windows’ that open and close” (Kingdon, as cited in Goodwin and Jasper, 2004: 12), i.e., “they are either there or not there” (Goodwin

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1 Note that among the repressive states of the Middle East Iran stands out as something of an anomaly. Encouraged by Mohammad Khatami’s reformist government (1997–2005), some-thing like a rudimentary civil society had emerged in which student and women’s move-ments could operate with some degree of impunity; indeed, this was the case until Ahmadinejad’s rise to power. Nothing of the kind had ever been possible in the far more authoritarian milieu of monarchies like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, wherein oppositional groups have historically had little or no opportunity to mount any kind of subversive action. However, in these states, Iran included, the so-called ‘mobilizing structures,’ i.e., formal lead-erships, organizational structures, and professional staffs, deemed by social movement theo-rists to be the foundational building blocks of social movements, are at best rudimentary and/or severely handicapped by state repression.

and Jasper, 2004: 12). In this schema, oppositional movements are assumed to be made up of “potential groups with preexisting desires … who only await the opportunity to pursue them” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2012: 15). Further, opportu-nities are deemed ‘special’ because they are infrequent and temporary and can be foreclosed by state repression. Thus accordingly to these models, the repres-sive power of the state is viewed as a “purely negative constraint” on mobiliza-tion (Goodwin and Jasper 2004: 12).

However, applying such universalistic, mechanistic and rigid prerequisites to any setting, let alone the Middle East, is highly problematic, precisely because “historical specificities [giving rise to any form of collective action] are never entirely reproducible” (Beinin and Vairel, 2011: 8). What is more, in most Middle East settings, such as Iran, oppositional movements have historically laboured under the ‘constant gaze’ of a state security apparatus, replete with formidable para-military groups, prepared to use whatever means necessary to ensure the survival of the state. Those dissidents courageous enough to trans-gress the narrow limits of public discourse imposed by the state risk arrest and ‘show trials,’ followed by long jail terms and, in extreme cases, execution. An equally grim fate awaits oppositional leaders, who are routinely harassed and intimidated, placed under house arrest and/or incarcerated for long periods. This can hardly be said to constitute a political environment rife with opportu-nities to mobilize oppositional movements.1 Thus, as Beinin and Vairel (2011: 19) opine, in a setting where “repression [has] deeply left [its] mark,” it should come as no surprise that “contention faces huge constraints” and that “the col-lective dimension of protest is far from [a] given.” This existential reality that is the Middle East compels “us to challenge the idea that [a] people mobilize in order to take advantage of [open] opportunities” (Beinin and Vairel, 2011: 22).

In what follows, I put the above observations to the test. By analyzing the status and composition of the Iranian state and that of the oppositional groups in the years and months leading up to the 2009 uprising, I shall be in a position



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to assess the claim of whether Iranians embarked on a course of collective action based on an ‘opening of political opportunities.’

The Iranian State Prior the 2009 Election

The Islamic Republic of Iran “mirrors [in part] the contemporary form of a …republican state” (Moslem, 2002: 30), having a constitution patterned on that of France’s Fifth Republic (1958), replete with the latter’s “multilayered and institutionally diffused” mechanisms (Moslem, 2002: 35). Institutional arrange-ments are thus predicated upon a clear division of powers among the execu-tive, juridical and legislative branches—a feature that disposes us to view the Iranian state system as “a modern phenomenon” (Mahdavi, 2008: 145), strik-ingly similar to the kind of governmental structures typical of “contemporary modern Western states” (Mahdavi, 2008: 146).

That said, the republican institutional structure of the state is inextricably intermeshed with ‘Islamic’ principles, derived in large part from “divinely ordained values,” the very same values embodied in the Velayat-e-Faqih or ‘The Rule/Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist’ (Bayat, 2013: 289). The center-piece of the post-revolutionary constitution, the latter comprises the backbone of Iran’s system of governance, as well as “the core [of its] legitimacy” (Bayat, 2013: 289). Given the complex and diffuse nature of the country’s system of governance, the precise scope of the Supreme Leader’s powers has been the subject of much speculation and scrutiny (see, for example, Moslem, 2002); it can be said with certainty, however, that this august figure “holds many institu-tional “extended arms,” ranging from the powerful Revolutionary Foundations to the parallel institutions [such as the Guardian Council],” [which , as will be shown, are] accountable, not to the republican institutions, but to the [Supreme Jurist himself]” (Mahdavi, 2008: 146).

And herein lies a contradiction: for while the institutional forms of the state have no “particularly Islamic features” to speak of (Zubaida, 1997:118), when it comes to governing the conduct of individuals and groups, there exists a total reliance on Islamic law—i.e., the body of law predicated on Sharia or the sacred law of Islam—which for the most part is interpreted and implemented by the judicial branch. The latter, while nominally independent of the other two branches, is in reality under the supervision and direction of the Supreme Leader who appoints its head.

The Supreme Leader’s power does not end here, however; among other things, he can dictate what is referred to as ‘practicable’ law. He can, for exam-ple, “enact any law, invariably eliminate or suspend any existing laws, or make

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any changes in the judicial, legislative or executive laws” for the purpose of ‘defending Islam’ and, by implication, the ‘Islamic state’ (Rafizadeh, 2011: 29). He even possesses the authority to “stop the implementation of the sharia,” and to “dismiss the founding pillars of Islam” should the survival of the state or even its general interests come under threat (Mahdavi, 2008: 145). Thus, it is the principle of Velayat (the rule of the Islamic Jurist), vested in the Supreme Leader as the representative of God on earth, that legitimizes the law of the land and, by implication the exercise of power, while providing a rationale for operationalizing that power. Thus are juxtaposed the contradictory principles of Velayat-e Faqih and republicanism; on the one hand stands the religiously sanctioned absolute power of the Supreme Jurist, on the other the sovereignty of the people who, “through their elected deputies, can enact laws in a Western style parliament and execute them through a presidential office” (Bayat, 2013: 289). The end product is, in the words of Ervand Abrahamian (2008: 163–4), an amal-gam “between divine rights and the rights of men; between theocracy and democracy; between vox dei and vox populi; and between clerical authority and popular sovereignty.”

This background note regarding the nature of the Iranian system of gover-nance, albeit brief, serves to place in a constitutional context the massive dem-onstrations that swept the country in 2009—a first step in gauging whether Green Movement activists mobilized in response to an opening of ‘political opportunities’ prior the mass rallies beginning in June.

The Case Against Intra-Elite Competition and/or Elite Allies who Encourage or Facilitate Collective Action

Regarding the election process, it is the Guardian Council of the Islamic Republic, comprising six clerics and six lawyers appointed by the Supreme Leader, that is charged with selecting presidential candidates deemed ‘fit’ to contest the country’s second highest office, that of the presidency. One of the key selection criteria is that candidates be prepared to submit unconditionally to the authority of the Supreme Jurist, something that “takes precedence over all [other] obligations” (Bayat, 2013: 293). It is reported that of the nearly 500 presidential candidates officially registered prior the 2009 election, a mere four succeeded in meeting the Council’s selection criteria (Addis, 2009). This in itself suggests that at the time the political authority wielded by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had in no way diminished prior to the election. Furthermore, the decision by the Guardian Council to give the oppositional candidates, namely Mir-Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, a green light to contest the presidency, suggests that at this juncture at least there was no hint of any rift between the two figures and the establishment.



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Indeed, closer analysis of the respective stances taken by the two opposi-tional candidates’ reveals that both wholeheartedly supported the Supreme Leader, thereby attesting to his political authority. For example, on April 4, 2009, the chief oppositional candidate, as well as a member of the Islamic Republic’s Expediency Discernment Council, Mir-Hussein Mousavi, hailed Khamenei’s 2009 Persian New Year’s slogan, a “Year of Reform in Consumption,” as heralding an innovative strategy for addressing the nation’s political and economic ills, in effect inviting all political parties to endorse the revolutionary ideals of the Islamic Republic (Mardomsalari, 2009a). Ten days later, Mousavi reaffirmed his position, proclaiming “who so ever wished to be a servant of the people must distance himself from those who oppose the state and its leader” (Mardomsalari, 2009b). On May 21, 2009, he again voiced support for Khamenei, pledging that in the event of an electoral victory, his government would forge stronger ties with all major state institutions, and in particular with the office of the Supreme Leader, the purpose being to launch the country along the ‘path of progress’ (Mardomsalari 2009c).

As early as April 8, 2009, Ayatollah Khamenei granted Mousavi a rare one-on-one audience (Mardomsalari, 2009d). Later, when asked by reporters whether he had had any fundamental differences with the Supreme Leader, he replied in the negative, adding that the talks had proved “very productive” (Mardomsalari, 2009e). He also insisted that the Supreme Faqih’s current man-agement of state organizations and institutions was highly transparent and that the prospects for full cooperation between the office of the Supreme Leader and any government he might head were “very bright” (Mardomsalari, 2009e). Ironically, at this very moment and continuing through the run up to the election and its immediate aftermath, it would be this defender of the office of the Supreme Leader, who would champion the cause of the Green Movement.

Rivalling Mousavi in pledging allegiance to the Supreme Leader was Mehdi Karoubi, the other principal oppositional leader and former parliamentary spokesman for the Islamic Republic. On April 22, 2009, while campaigning in the city of Arak, Karoubi credited Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, with the state’s success in overcoming ‘formidable chal-lenges’ over the course of three decades. He was quick to add that following Khomeini’s death, it was Khamenei, his student and protégé, who rightfully assumed the position of Supreme Leader (Mardomsalari, 2009f). And on April 26, he pledged that if elected president, he would welcome criticism and dis-sent on condition that Asl-e Nezam or ‘the foundation of the Islamic Republic,’ of which Velayat-e-Faqih is an integral part, remained intact (Mardomsalari, 2009g). Speaking three weeks later in Kermanshah, he fervently endorsed this position while outlining plans for reform in the areas of domestic and foreign

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policy: “my ‘red-lines’ for implementing reform measures are the national interest, the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, and the Supreme Leader” (Mardomsalari, 2009h). Ironically, notwithstanding his position, Karoubi, like Mousavi, would emerge as a staunch defender of the mass movement that would sweep across Iran only a month later.

It is important to note that the professions of allegiance offered the Supreme Leader by these two political figures connotes neither a lack of criticism where the establishment was concerned nor the lack of major differences with the Supreme Leader in the areas of both domestic and foreign policy (see, for example, Mardomsalari, 2009j; Mardomsalari, 2009k). It might even be argued that both candidates adopted a conciliatory stance vis-à-vis Khamenei for no other reason than to avoid forfeiting their candidatures. That said, the point to be made here is that as late as the run up to the 2009 election, there was no evidence of ‘unstable intra-elite alignments’ or ‘elite allies’ that might have facilitated and/or encouraged oppositional elements to mobilize en mass.

What lends this observation further credence is that the initial demonstra-tions—some the largest since the Iranian Revolution of 1979—that began on June 13th and lasted for two days, were characterized, for the most part, by spontaneous forms of collective action, with little to no prior organization or formal leadership (Bayat, 2013; Dabashi, 2011). As Hamid Dabashi (2011) reports, Mousavi made his first public appearance only on June 15th, two days into the uprising, at which time he called for fresh demonstrations to be staged on the 18th. Moreover, it was as late as June 17th that Karoubi presented a plan to hold a rally on the 29th.

Particularly germane to this enquiry is the fact that clerics gave their official blessing to the Green Movement only in July, a full month after the June dem-onstrations. Two of these endorsements were of particular substance: the first was a Fatwa (a legal/religious ruling handed down by a senior Islamic clergy-man) declared on July 11th by the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who, though the country’s most senior cleric, was also a staunch critic of the establishment (Sahimi, 2009). Six days later, on the occasion of Friday Prayers, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, at the time chairman of the Islamic Republic’s Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for appointing or removing the Supreme Leader, called for a ‘restoration of trust,’ demanding, among other things, the release of political prisoners, freedom of the press, and a construc-tive dialogue with the opposition (Black, 2009). Again, the point to be made is that prior the election of June 12th, there was no sign or evidence of instability within elite circles or alliances between elites and oppositional elements that might have been interpreted by green activists as a signal and/or encourage-ment to mobilize en mass.



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The Case Against Geopolitical and International Pressures as a Factor in Opening up Opportunities for the Emergence of the Green Movement

Ever since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been at pains to make the case that it is the target of ‘foreign plots’ that threaten its very existence. This existential threat has in part provided a pretext for crushing the opposi-tion, which is, it is further claimed, aided and abetted by foreign enemies bent on destroying the revolution. Chief among these enemies is the United States with a history of meddling in Iran’s internal affairs going back to the 1953 cia-sponsored coup that ousted the popular and democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Indeed, Washington is often characterized by the Islamic Republic as the ‘Great Satan’ whose diabolical mission is to incite a ‘colored revolution’ on Iranian soil. While analyzing Iranian-us rela-tions cannot by itself capture the totality of the external factors impinging upon the Green Movement, it can at the very least, provide some sense of the geopolitical context in which the Green Movement emerged.

In the months preceding the election, there occurred a new and positive development in Iranian-us relations. On March 20, 2009, newly-elected us president Barak Obama, speaking on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, struck a conciliatory note by twice using the term ‘Islamic Republic of Iran,’ the country’s official name—a gesture clearly indicating a departure from Bush administration policy, which had consistently referred to Tehran as a ‘regime’ or, worse, a charter member of the ‘axis of evil.’ Obama’s speech was intended to set in motion a policy of ‘engagement’ with Iranian leaders, aimed at initiat-ing talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. This overture on the part of Washington would, however, be categorically rejected by Ayatollah Khamenei, who only a day later declared that the Obama administration was pursuing the same tactic of accusing Iran of terrorism and of developing nuclear weapons. “[T]hey claim to have extended a hand toward Iran,” Khamenei asserted, but “[i]f the extended hand is covered with a velvet glove but underneath it, the hand is made of cast iron, this does not have a good meaning at all” (as cited in Erdbrink, 2009).

That the Obama initiative, considered by some to be a “major turning point in the United States’ approach to Iran” (Stein, 2009), was so summarily rejected cannot be understood without referencing its geopolitical context. In 2009, with its ground troops bogged down in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was facing the spectre of a second Vietnam. Further cause for alarm lay in Tehran’s increasing support for both the Afghani-Taliban and guerrilla forces under the control of the Iraqi Shi’ite Al-Mahdi army. It is in light of these cir-cumstances that Hamid Dabashi (2011a) would pronounce Obama to be “in a very weak position” in relation to an Iran seemingly bent on developing a

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nuclear deterrent. Washington’s reluctance to voice support for Iranian dem-onstrators in the run up to the election and during the post-election crisis would appear to lend credence to Dabashi’s remarks. Indeed, as late as June 23, 2009, Obama declared: “I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering [in] Iran’s affairs” (The White House Blog, 2009). A sense of Washington’s confusion and paralysis vis-à-vis Tehran was perhaps most poignantly evoked by the slogan “Obama Obama Ya Ba Oona Ya Ba Ma” (Obama, you are either with us or with them), chanted during the street demonstrations as late as November 2009, some five months into the uprising (see Sadeghi, 2013). Washington was in no position, however, to support the opposition in Iran, which effectively bol-stered the Islamic Republic’s confidence and sense of security.

The Diminishing Capacity of the State to Repress Dissidents?As noted above, the Islamic Republic of Iran holds municipal, parliamentary, and presidential election on a regular basis. Prior to every major election, the state invariably relaxes political repression in order to produce higher voter turnouts and, by implication, bolster its legitimacy. The tenth presidential election, slated for June 12, 2009, proved no exception to this rule, with Tehran going so far as to tolerate public debates and discussions as well as open shows of support for candidates. The question here, however, has to do with whether this easing up signaled a diminished capacity on the part of the state to repress political dissent. Addressing this question requires assessing the Ahmadinejad administrations’ grip on power.

Following victory in the 2005 presidential election, Ahmadinejad would oversee the transformation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc) into a formidable force whose purview extended over nearly every sphere of Iranian society. Much has been said about the irgc’s politicization during Ahmadinejad’s first term (see, for example, Safshekan and Sabet, 2010; Sinkaya, 2011). A former Guard member himself, the newly elected president set about appointing irgc members to key government positions. By 2009, it had emerged as the most “powerful security and military organization” in the coun-try (Nader, 2010), surpassing even the Ministry of Intelligence in domestic intel-ligence gathering capability as well as monitoring and even manipulating oppositional groups. Indeed, the irgc, whose head is appointed by the Supreme Leader, had by 2009 developed a symbiotic relationship with Khamenei. The latter, along with support provided by both the Ahmadinejad government and the Basij, the state’s paramilitary militia, enabled it to build a “vast social- political-economic-security” apparatus capable of monitoring and controlling virtually “every aspect of Iranian society” (Safshekan and Sabet, 2010: 549). As a result of



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these developments, on the eve of the 2009 election the Islamic Republic had, Asef Bayat concludes, taken on a “deeply authoritarian, … ideologically exclu-sive, [and] a more militar[isitic]… character” (2013: 291).

A closer look at events unfolding immediately prior the post-election crisis lends further support to Bayat’s conclusions. For example, on June 8th, four days before the polls opened, General Yadollah Javani, head of the Political Bureau of the irgc, warned that “any action to launch a velvet revolution in Iran will be crushed immediately,” adding that “if political groups and parties in Iran are realistic, they will not move towards planning or implementing such scenarios” (as cited in Rafiei, 2012). This was nothing short of a solemn pledge made by a state prepared to counter with brute force, if necessary, any perceived threat to the political status quo—a pledge reaffirmed some 11 days later when, during his first public appearance, Ayatollah Khamenei warned the crowds assembled in the streets to disperse, thus signalling state security forces to crack down on future demonstrations. Indeed, this occurred the following day, the 20th, resulting in, among other things, the tragic death of Neda Agha-Soltan, who would soon emerge as a symbolic figure for the Green Movement (cnn News, 2009).

Access to and/or Openness in the Political System?In 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeded the reform-minded Mohammad Khatami who had held the presidency for two successive terms (1997–2005). Central to the reformist discourse and “a key component of Khatami’s vision of civil society” was the institutionalization of ‘individual rights,’ a theme of both his 1997 campaign and presidency (Nabavi, 2012: 46). For Khatami, such rights were no mere abstractions, for what he envisioned was a society wherein “every human being has rights [within] a framework of law and order,” which meant that their defence numbered among the “central duties of the state” (as cited in Armin, 1999: 181). While Khatami’s success in realizing this vision remains a matter of debate, under his reformist administration, both the indi-vidual and civil society groups enjoyed a large measure of political freedom, at least by the standards of the Islamic Republic.

Ahmadinejad’s election victory would open a new chapter in the history of the Islamic Republic, one marked by a “return to power … [of the] hardliners” (Tohidi, 2010: 123), otherwise known as the ‘Principlists,’ a faction celebrated for “their [absolute] commitment to traditional Islamic principles” (Safshekan and Sabet, 2010: 546) to the exclusion of all other alternatives. The Iranian political spectrum would come to be anchored at one end by the Principlists, representing the ultra-conservative wing of the Islamic right, at the other by the reformist faction, constituting the left. This division, which persists to this

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day, as evinced by the current composition of the Iranian Parliament, emerged, in part, owing to Khatami’s reformist project. Whereas reformers, who sub-scribe to Khatt-e Emam (the line of Khomeini), advocate a re-interpretation of Islam in light of modern realities, Principlists adhere to the so-called Khatt-e Emam va Rahbari (The line of Khomeini and current Supreme Leader Khamenei), calling, among other things, for a renewed commitment to Islamic governance under the direction of the Supreme Leader (Safshekan and Sabet, 2010). These ultra-conservatives were, and continue to be, committed to “strip-ping the Islamic Republic of its republican component, by turning it into an Islamic government” informed by a “radicalis[t]…discourse” (Bayat, 2013: 292). By 2005, Safshekan and Sabet report, the reformists had lost the bulk of their seats in key institutions, chief among them, “the City and Village Councils [and the] Majlis… to the right” (2010: 547). This shift in the composition of the Islamic Republic’s key institutions persisted well through 2009.

As a result of this political reshuffling, Ahmadinejad’s new government was able, almost immediately, to set about “re-ideologiz[ing] … Iranian domestic … polic[y]” with a view to preparing the way for a state-led or “top-down Islamization of [Iran’s] pluralistic society,” something that would spell an end to individual rights and freedoms (Nazifkar, 2011: 8). Partly as the result of this radical shift to the right, the Islamic Republic’s official discourse steered clear of signifying the individual as the bearer of rights; henceforward, the citizen would be conceived in very different terms: that of a bearer of duties to the Islamic Republic. This change in policy had the effect of rolling back freedoms enjoyed by civil society groups and silencing the voices of dissent, thus “depriv-ing millions of citizens …[of the right to] participat[e] in decisions concerning public life” (Bayat, 2013: 291). Moreover, implementing the new policy required, among other things, “a massive police deployment [and a] violent crackdown [on civil society groups], [combined with an] extensive propaganda [cam-paign] in the media” (Bayat, 2013: 295). Chief among the victims, as Asef Bayat (2013: 293) points out, were “ordinary Iranians: the excluded, the poor, [the stu-dents] and most women.” Thus it should come as no surprise that in the period 2005–2009 various civil society groups found themselves unrepresented in the decision making process and bereft of the individual rights the Khatami administration had sought to institutionalize. Later, citing the experiences of the student and women groups that would play so pivotal a role in the 2009 uprising, I document how these two social strata were systematically pushed to the margins of sociopolitical life, all with a view to elucidating their position vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic and its institutional system.

As is evident, analysis of the political environment prior to the June 2009 election reveals that on no account can a case be made for an opening or



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expansion of ‘political opportunities,’ which would imply weakness on the part of Tehran that might be exploited by oppositional groups to mobilize en mass. Particularly germane to this enquiry, prior the 2009 uprising, “no viable opposi-tion, in or out of the country, was threatening [the Islamic Republic’s] stability” (Dabashi, 2010: 47). Moreover, for its part, the Islamic Republic was so confi-dent of its control over the general populace that it was prepared to risk a gen-eral election. Given these circumstances, what was it that precipitated the popular uprising of 2009?

Perceived Opportunities Leading to the Rise of the Green Movement: A Constructivist Account

Social movements do not emerge in a vacuum; they are, in essence, the by-product of “an extraordinary large number of processes and events [that unfold] in historically complex combinations and sequences” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004: 11). In other words, a social movement is “not just a thing,” but a process to be interrogated primarily as a “historical phenomenon in a span of time” (Bayat, 2005: 897). Thus, as Goodwin and Jasper (2004: 27) assert, “the search for universally valid propositions and models, at least for anything so complex as social movements, is [almost always] bound to fail,” precisely because it is impossible to “identify universal categor[ies] of acts… outside of the ethical and political conditions within which” they emerge (Mahmood, 2005: 9). If Bayat, Goodwin and Jasper and Mahmood are correct, then an anal-ysis of the emergence of any social movement must take into account the his-torical conditions that compel the cast of actors to breathe life into it. In order to explicate such conditions, we must first delineate the particular experiences of those actors. This means that, rather than view them as individuals with inflexible, ahistorical, and pre-existing motives/characteristics, i.e., as agents possessing an a priori and mechanistic essence, along with “objective interests who only await opportunity to pursue them,” we must instead envision them as active agents creating for themselves the “dispositions and desires” that con-stitute the sine qua non for mobilization (Goodwin and Jasper, 2012: 15).

What I am suggesting here is that if Iran’s Green Movement emerged in the absence of open political opportunities, then we must re-focus our analytical lens to take account of the actors’ perceptions and beliefs. Once this shift in focus is made, we can think of opportunities as attributes of the very actors involved in a social movement, actors who have subjectivities, who are author-itative and who can in a legitimate fashion, “construct their histories … under circumstances they have the power to change” (Kurzman, 2004: 117). In such

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cases “if [actors] define situations as real, they are real in their circumstances,” which means that even if no political opportunities exist in reality, they can still be perceived to exist (Thomas and Thomas, 1932: 572). That said, the actors’ beliefs and perceptions do not occur in a vacuum; rather they are grounded in “historically shifting and situationally contingent combinations and sequences of processes and events” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2004: 27) that make them rele-vant to a particular political setting, which in turn may compel a people to mobilize as, for example, when “their sense of justice [and] moral[]” values is violated beyond endurance (Beinin and Vairel, 2011: 22). In this schema, the repressive state matters as a matrix wherein the actors’ understanding of real-ity is shaped. Indeed, the Iranian state, with its formidable apparatus of repres-sion, serves as an ideal laboratory in which to examine this process at work. Next, I examine the experiences of various student and women’s groups during Ahmadinejad’s first administration (2005–2009) by tracing their activities in the lead up to the 2009 election. As these groups would play a central role in the Green Movement, their experiences will shed light on how actors come to perceive opportunities as ripe for mobilizing.

Ahmadinejad’s First Term in Office: A History of the Struggle of the Student and Women’s Groups

While the Islamic Republic has exerted every effort to repress student activism, the latter remains “a prominent feature of Iranian politics” (Rivetti and Cavatorta, 2012: 6). Iranian universities were, and remain, hotbeds of dissent and student groups the fiercest defenders of political freedom. In addition, stu-dents constitute a powerful social force—numbering by 2010 3.8 million in a country of just over 75 million, making 1 in 20 Iranians a university student (World Education News & Review, 2013).

During Ahmadinejad’s first term (2005–2009), students were confronted by a new government strategy aimed at curbing dissent. Daneshjooyan-e Setarehdar, whose literal meaning is ‘asterisked students,’ required that an asterisk be affixed to the name of each student deemed a threat to the Islamic Republic. In the summer of 2006, the authorities introduced a comprehensive three-tier classification scheme (Fassihi, 2009). Those students with one aster-isk were permitted to return to school on condition they signed a document stipulating they would no longer engage in any form of political activism. Two asterisks meant suspension from classes and interrogation, three a life-long ban from all institutions of higher learning. To identify the victims, the state turned to its national security apparatus, a network of security forces and



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informants under the aegis of the Ministry of Intelligence. The latter, accord-ing to Farnaz Fassihi (2009), routinely monitors the email and telephone con-versations of suspected dissidents and activists of every stripe. While the precise number of ‘asterisked students’ remains unknown, it is believed several hundred have been interrogated, of whom many were expelled from school.

The asterisked student policy paved the way for the more comprehensive Amniati Shodane daneshgaha or ‘securitization of the universities,’ which was implemented by the Basij, the Islamic Republic’s paramilitary organization, some of whose members were admitted to universities on the basis of a quota system approved by the state. As Saeid Golkar (2010) reports, by 2004 there were already 420,000 Basiji students enrolled in Iranian universities, and by 2007 this number had risen to 600,000. These cadres, the Islamic Republic’s so-called ‘campus watchdogs,’ were tasked with silencing student dissent, some-thing deemed to be of critical importance given that universities constituted hotbeds of political radicalism.

University students were not alone in incurring Tehran’s wrath. All but the most conservative of women’s groups were frequently targeted by a state com-mitted to upholding the patriarchal order at any cost. Once installed, the Ahmadinejad’s administration set about formulating policies and developing social programs aimed at further subordinating and marginalizing women. Thus in 2006 the government introduced, to take but one example, the Tarh-e Rahmat or the “Compassion Plan,” the express purpose of which lay in “indoctrinating housewives to be more obedient to their husbands” (Sadeghi, 2012: 127). That same year witnessed the introduction of the Tarh-e Amnyate-e Ejtema’i or “Public Safety Plan,” targeting ‘improperly-veiled’ women, whom the government was now free to harass in public places. The following year these initiatives were com-plemented by what would become known as the “Family Bill,” which, in essence, removed many of the legal barriers to practicing polygamy (Sadeghi, 2012).

It was partly in response to such discriminatory measures that in the sum-mer of 2006 the One Million Signature Campaign was launched, the aim of which was twofold: 1) to protest laws discriminating against women and 2) to educate the public, and especially women, regarding the legal issues raised by such laws (Rafizadeh, 2011). Ultimately, the campaign fell short of achieving its goal of collecting one million signatures due to a systematic crack down on campaign supporters mounted by the state’s security forces, which included constant government harassment and even imprisonment (Rafizadeh, 2011). Consequently, the One Million Signature Campaign was forced underground. More importantly, by the end of Ahmadinejad’s first term, the position of women, already precarious, had deteriorated to a point not seen since 1997, the year the reformer Khatami assumed the office of the presidency.

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In light of the heavy-handed treatment meted out by the “most reactionary and repressive elements of the Islamic Republic” (Ahmadi Khorasani, 2009: 43), it is hardly surprising that in the weeks leading up to the election, civil society groups, and women and students in particular, would become highly politicized, a development that would “distinguish the [2009 presidential race] from previ-ous races” (Tohidi, 2009). These groups were keen to remove Ahmadinejad and to wipe from memory four long years of misrule that had turned Iran into a “frustrated society.” (Nazifkar, 2011: 9); indeed, it was, for them, very much a case of “anybody but Ahmadinejad” (Hashemi and Postel, 2011: xi). The election chant of Ahmadi-bye-bye (Good-bye Ahmadinejad) reflected the general anti-govern-ment sentiment prevailing at the time as well as the hope for a better future, which could be achieved only by fundametally altering the status-quo.

Out on the campaign trail, both Mir-Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi took up the respective causes of the student and women’s groups. How is it possible to explain the actions of these two key figures, whose allegiance to the Supreme Jurist, was, at least nominally, beyond question? The answer is that both sought reform, and particularly the restoration of individual rights and freedoms, as a means of saving the Islamic Republic from itself. A government made accountable would guarantee the rights of citizens who would then reciprocate by lending it their support. For both candidates, the solution lay in bringing into balance the two principles upon which the Islamic Republic had been founded: Islamism and republicanism. Under the Ahmadinejad adminis-tration the former had come to eclipse the latter to a degree that, in their view, boded ill for the future stability of the country. Thus, on April 4, 2009, Mousavi stated, “I believe an overemphasis on the Islamic aspect of the state [would be] a disaster for our country,” adding “[s]hould we solely adhere to the state’s Islamic ideals, we are left with a rigid interpretation of Islam [which is] alien to present-day realities” (Mardomsalari, 2009a). Karoubi voiced the same concern. For example, on May 12, 2009, he declared: “[u]nfortunately, the republican dimension of [the Islamic Republic] has been damaged and constrained,” add-ing that a first step to restoring republicanism would be “to give people the freedom to choose” presidential candidates (Mardomsalari, 2009h). I shall turn now to analyzing how these two key political figures responded to the demands of the student and women’s groups in the run-up to the 2009 election.

Events during the Months Preceding the 2009 Election

In May 2009, with the presidential race getting underway, both Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi made it clear that student demands and concerns



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would feature prominently in their respective platforms. Indeed, for Mousavi, the repressive measures directed at university students were cause for alarm, and for three reasons: first, without acknowledging and embracing diversity, the Islamic Republic would ultimately fail to survive; second, issues and con-cerns raised by the students were in no way exclusive to them but shared by many outside academe and women’s circles who were deeply concerned about the future course of the country; lastly, political arrests and other forms of state-directed persecution were proving counterproductive as they served only to fuel further discontent without addressing its cause (see, for example, Mardomsalari, 2009i; Fararu Daily, 2009). Thus when Mousavi hit the cam-paign trail, he made a point of defending the students at every opportunity. For example, on April 25th, when asked by Ferdowsi University students to com-ment on student arrests, he declared: “I am against arresting students for voic-ing political opinions as I believe this serves only to undermine the national interest” (Mardomsalari, 2009j). He went on to opine that the aspirations and concerns of the students were shared by many patriotic Iranians who wanted only what was best for the country. And on May 6th, while speaking at Kerman, he reminded his audience, comprised chiefly of students, that in “a progressive Iran, with law, justice and freedom,” there was no place for securitizing univer-sities and pledged to appoint an education minister committed to rescinding this policy (Mardomsalari, 2009i). He followed these remarks by advocating that all government restraints on freedom of expression in the universities be removed.

With regard to the policy of designating student political activists as ‘aster-isked students,’ Mousavi pledged on several occasions that any government he headed would rescind this odious measure at the earliest opportunity. Thus, during an April 20th meeting with a group of student committees, he made clear his opposition to expelling students on account of their political activ-ism, arguing that education is a basic human right, which no government should have the authority to violate (Fararu Daily, 2009). “Distrusting students is distrusting the nation,” he asserted, adding that the “current government’s distrust of students represents the chief reason for securitizing the universi-ties” (Fararu Daily, 2009). He also reminded his audience that “it is a belief in human dignity and the value of personal freedoms that drives my determina-tion to alter the status quo” (Fararu Daily, 2009). On yet another occasion, dur-ing an April 30th speaking engagement at Kermanshah, he denounced not only the policy of affixing asterisks to the names of student activists, but the entire university securitization policy of which it was a part, declaring the latter to be in direct conflict with his thinking on the future of higher education (Mardomsalari, 2009k). Upon hearing these words, the students among the

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audience began chanting “Mousavi, Mousavi, We Support You” and “We Love You, Mousavi,” to which he responded by asserting: “[w]e have to think of uni-versities as a dominion of freedom, as a space for freedom of thought, for free exchanges and free expression” (Mardomsalari, 2009k).

Analysis of the election campaign conducted by Mehdi Karoubi clearly indicates that, he, like his rival Mir Hussein Mousavi, was committed to dis-mantling repressive education policies. Adopting the campaign slogan Ta’ghir, or “Change,” Karoubi on numerous occasions articulated his views on higher education. For example, during a May 6th debate with a group of Khajeh Nasir Tousi university students, he voiced concern regarding the securitization of the universities, which he blamed on the Ahmadinejad administration’s ‘inex-perience’ (Mardomsalari, 2009l). As for the government’s crackdown on politi-cal activists, Karoubi emphasized that he “was opposed to the ‘asterisked student’ policy and condemned the practice of suspending and expelling dis-sidents” (Mardomsalari, 2009l).

Amidst these events, there occurred on May 1st an event of signal impor-tance: the release by the Office for Consolidating Unity, the country’s largest student union, of a list of demands that included the immediate removal of all restrictions on freedom of thought, expression, and association, the aim of which was to securitize the universities. Notes Ladan Bouroumand (2009: 18), “[t]he demands … included calls for (among other things) academic freedom, an end to gender discrimination on [university] campus[es], an end to admis-sions based on political and religious opinions, and an end to rules that allow administrators to suspend student dissidents.”

It should be noted that the general program endorsed by the students far exceeded these demands, calling for, among other things, full religious and minority rights, democratic elections, judicial reform, gender equality, and full labour, civil and human rights. By inveigling the presidential candidates to respond to these demands, the students were able to articulate them before a national audience. On the 14th and 15th of May, moreover, they held a seminar entitled “Civil Society, Agenda-Based Action, and Accountable Government” to which the full slate of candidates was invited. And although none attended personally, Mousavi and Karoubi did dispatch representatives to outline their respective positions on the students’ demands. Also in attendance were wom-en’s and other oppositional groups, whose members delivered speeches urging all candidates to adopt pro-civil society platforms. On this particular occasion, the students judged Karoubi’s agenda to be the more germane in so far as meeting their demands, which prompted the Office for Consolidating Unity, to join his campaign. As Boroumand notes, it was the general consensus among the students “that [Karoubi] had answered their demands most concretely and



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had promised to push them with the state leadership” (2009: 19). In the weeks leading up to the election they would use Karoubi’s campaign “as a vehicle for the promotion of human rights, women’s rights, and civil rights in the streets and squares” (Boroumand, 2009: 19).

Karoubi and Mousavi also proved sympathetic to women’s groups seeking basic rights and freedoms long denied them by a government determined to preserve the status quo of which patriarchy was a pillar. Both candidates were prepared, moreover, not only to acknowledge women’s concerns and demands but also take concrete action to address them. As early as May 30, 2009, Mousavi had published “Five Goals and Forty-five Strategies for Solving Women’s Problems,” a manifesto proclaiming social and political equality for women (Mousavi, 2009). This publication, regarded as one of the most “remarkable [documents pertaining to women of] the post-revolutionary [period],” called for a mix of economic, legal and sociopolitical reforms to the patriarchal order (Sadeghi, 2012: 123). On the campaign trail, Mousavi repeatedly committed himself to overturning that order. Thus, on May 19th, in the city of Yazd, he pledged to do everything possible to eradicate gender discrimination, includ-ing appointing women to senior positions in government ministries (Mardomsalari, 2009m). Earlier, on April 23, while campaigning in Golestan province, he boldly condemned all forms of discrimination against women and pledged to eradicate polygamy (Mardsomsalari, 2009n). He then pro-ceeded to criticize the aforementioned Family Plan on the grounds that it had heightened discrimination against women by weakening the laws prohibiting polygamy. Mousavi concluded his remarks by promising to remove all “legal barriers that discriminate against women” (Mardsomsalari, 2009n).

Mousavi’s campaign would take on a decidedly ‘feminine tone’—something unprecedented in Iranian politics—with the active involvement of his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a politician in her own right. Indeed, the tenth presidential race would witness, for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the phenomenon of “a woman appear[ing] as an equal partner and intellectual match for her man” (Mir-Husseini, 2011: 129). In a bid to underscore Mousavi’s commitment to gender equality, his campaign headquarters circulated photo-graphs of Rahnavard, alongside those of her husband, with captions such as Mousavi, Rahnavard, Tasavi-ye Zano Mard or “Mousavi, Rahnavard, Equality Between Men and Women” (Sadeghi, 2012: 124). Over the course of several inter-views and speeches, Rahnavard condemned both political autocracy and gen-der discrimination, going so far as to criticize the practice of wearing the Hijab, the compulsory veil, and urging women to vote for Mousavi (Sadeghi, 2012).

Karoubi would prove no less supportive of the women’s movement than his rival. As early as May 19th, he issued a pamphlet entitled “Women’s Rights

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2 The conservative candidates, along with their representatives, either did not participate in the seminars and meetings held by various student and women’s groups, or when they did, limited themselves to vague promises to address outstanding concerns or simply dismissed them outright. For example, during a television debate, when questioned by Mousavi

Manifesto,” which laid out a comprehensive strategy for promoting gender equality (Karoubi, 2009). Included among its chief provisions were legal prohi-bitions on any act or statement aimed at threatening or intimidating a woman in a public place and salaries and insurance plans for housewives. In particular, this document underscored the need for women to be included in the state’s key intuitions, e.g., the Assembly of the Experts, the Expediency Discernment Council, and the Guardian Council. And like Mousavi, Karoubi pledged to pro-mote gender equality. For example, on May 1st, while speaking at Azad University in Boushehr, he committed himself to including women in government agen-cies and ministries as a first step to preparing them to take up executive posi-tions (Aftab News, 2009). On this same occasion, Jamileh Kadivar, his campaign spokeswoman, emphasized that for Karoubi, achieving gender equality meant guaranteeing women political, economic, social and cultural rights.

A common plank in the platforms of both oppositional candidates was a commitment to support the Iranian Women’s Movement, a coalition that in the run-up to the June election had “brought together forty groups and more than seven-hundred [women’s rights activists]” (Boroumand, 2009: 18). Observes Victoria Tahmasbi-Birjani (2010: 84):

[In April 2009], for the first time in Iranian history, women formed a broad coalition which brought together civil rights advocates, ngos, political activists, and women who were active in presidential campaigns, media, and trade unions under one banner … The coalition presented their issues to all four [candidates] and demanded a response from each … [It further demanded] … Iran … [sign] the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (cedaw) and … eliminate all discriminatory laws against women.

The coalition proceeded to organize seminars and conferences and “openly [distribute] brochures, sponsor petitions, and recruit new members” (Boroumand, 2009: 18). In marked contrast to Mousavi and Karoubi, Ahmadinejad pointedly ignored its demands—indeed, his representative went so far as to criticize the latter for contravening ‘Islamic’ principles—as would fellow conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaie, a former commander of the irgc and current member of the Expediency Discernment Council.2 Thus,



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regarding the ‘asterisked students,’ Ahmadinejad at first refused to acknowledge the exis-tence of this policy. However, when pressed he dismissed it as a measure that pre-dated his administration (See Jaam-E-Jam Network, 2009). Regarding women’s issues, whereas both Mousavi and Karoubi outlined progressive policies for addressing them, Ahmadinejad remained silent for the most part; indeed, he was the only candidate “who made no mention of women’s issues in his platform” (See Tohidi, 2009). For his part, Mohsen Rezaie was vague regarding student and women’s issues. For example, on several occasions he opined that the law should be changed to ensure ‘equality’ between men and women in all social spheres but provided few details as to how this might be brought about, leaving many questioning his commitment to the cause of gender equality (see, for example, Tahmasebi, 2013).

of the leading candidates, only Mousavi and Karoubi would respond positively to the coalition agenda, both “vow[ing] to pursue Iran’s adherence (with reli-gious reservations attached) to the cedaw” and “pledg[ing] to nominate women to important decision-making posts” (Boroumand, 2009: 18).

It is clear from the above discussion that Mousavi and Karoubi chose to direct most of their fire at repressive policies—and particularly those directed against students and women—implemented during Ahmadinejad’s first term. What both sought was to preserve the Islamic Republic by introducing reform-ist measures to be directed, for the most part, at restoring individual rights and freedoms suppressed by the incumbent administration. It was very much a case of enlisting reform in the defense of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, Mousavi had asserted on numerous occasions that he had entered the presidential race because he was “deeply alarmed” at the direction in which the country was headed, citing in particular the “serious challenges” raised by the government’s treatment of ordinary, law-abiding citizens (see, for example, Mardomsalari, 2009a; Mardomsalari, 2009i; Mardomsalari, 2009o). “We have certain problem-atic laws”, he contended, while speaking in Kerman on May 7, 2009, “that need to be changed through lawful means,” for otherwise “[the Islamic Repubic] will cease to exist” (Mardomsalari, 2009i). The same calculus informed Karoubi’s electoral campaign as exemplified by his slogan ‘Change.’ Thus, for example, in a June 7, 2009 statement entitled “Reviving and Expanding Citizenry Rights,” he advocated reform measures that would guarantee individual rights and free-doms within a “constitutional framework” (Karoubi, 2009b). In the same state-ment, Karoubi expressed deep concern for the Islamic Republic’s prospects, which he deemed poor unless the Guardian Council was reformed, by which he meant terminating its ‘supervisory role,’ which had proved so effective in ‘discouraging’ those with ‘othering tendencies’ from running as presidential candidates. Both candidates were, first and foremost, responding to the will of a people determined to play an active, indeed decisive, role in shaping the future; they were encouraged in this regard by what they perceived to be

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implicit in the platforms of both candidates: an unprecedented opportunity to implement comprehensive reforms.

Iran’s Green Movement as a Movement of Movements

The activities of the student and women’s groups in the months leading up to the June election clearly demonstrate that in the electoral platforms of Mousavi and Karoubi they perceived a “sudden realisation of the opportunity” for politi-cal reform (Nazifkar, 2011: 9, emphases added). Indeed, in the months prior to June the disparate social strata, and in particular the above two groups, had “raised the stakes of the election,” transforming it into “a national struggle [for self-liberation], for Iran, [and] for its future” (Nazifkar, 2011: 10). They achieved this end by recasting themselves as authoritative citizens determined to alter the status quo; in so doing, they “[charged] the social and political atmosphere … with hope, … confidence, and euphoria” (Nazifkar, 2011: 10).

However, when all hope of political reform had been dashed by Ahma-dinejad’s re-election and with rumours of election fraud running rampant—rumours seemingly confirmed by an over-hasty announcement that the incumbent president, their arch-enemy, had secured an astounding 63 percent of the vote—disparate oppositional groups poured onto the streets. On that day of June 13th, i.e., one day after Ahmadinejad’s victory was announced, spon-taneous demonstrations erupted in all the major cities, soon to be awash with the colour green. June 15th would witness the largest and longest demonstra-tions in the history of the Islamic Republic, when an estimated three million protestors turned out (Abrahamian, as cited in Postel and Hashemi, 2011). Moreover, just as during the election campaign, “[the general] euphoria … [stemmed] not just … [from the prospect of] … change itself, [but also] … [from] “the perceived actual possibility … [of] change” (Nazifkar, 2011: 10). Now, Iranians would take to the streets to seize these perceived opportunities, chanting “Where is my vote?” – the signature refrain of the Green Movement. The waves of protest that would sweep through the cities represented “a con-junctional phenomenon consisting of [oppositional groups] in the pre- election period”—groups committed to changing the status quo and galvanized into action by the perception that this was a real possibility, an outcome within their reach (Harris, 2012: 443). In other words, what the street demonstrations really amounted to was an effort to reclaim the possibility of realizing change—a possibility first realized by the demonstrators themselves in the weeks pre-ceding an election they perceived to be winnable. Thus, the opportunity for mobilization would be “what they [made] of it” (Kurzman, 2004: 117).



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3 Note that the concept of a ‘movement of movements’ first surfaced in a 2003 special issue of the New Left Review and was later used in Tom Mertes’ (2004) edited volume, entitled A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible?, to describe disparate anti-capitalist alliances that emerged in the post-Cold War era. These movements were branded ‘movement of movements’ because they were a source of inspiration for similar protest movements in others parts of the globe that engaged the same issues. For example, in the mid-1990s, small farmers’ unions in Europe joined their counterparts in Latin America, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Africa, in campaigning “against the food Multinationals, whose pro-gramme for regulating world agriculture on neoliberal lines took a massive step forward as gatt morphed into the wto in 1994” (Mertes, 2004: ix). Such movements were unique owing to the way in which their cadres used information technology, including the World Wide Web, to build solidarity. At the same time, they lacked the charismatic leadership of tradi-tional social movements, an attribute that speaks to their egalitarianism. As will be shown here, while my articulation of the concept may recall the plurality of these movements, I use the concept of ‘movement of movements’ in a different sense and in relation to a different context to illuminate the history, composition, character, and resiliency of the Green Movement as a mega social movement years in the making, a movement that is to be under-stood as a historical and localized revolt against the authoritarian setting within which it developed and conducted its operations.

Given its diverse composition and the historical context within which it emerged, and in light of the repressive political environment in which it devel-oped and operated, the Green Movement may be best described, I would argue, as a ‘movement of movements.’3 The term ‘movement of movements’ connotes the Green Movement as a mega social movement, embracing and rep-resenting smaller oppositional movements—composed of youth, student and women’s groups, workers, and bazaris—that independently of one another would have had little, if any, hope of succeeding in mobilizing against the Islamic Republic— at least not in such numbers and over so long a period of time— as evinced by the fate of earlier post-revolutionary oppositional move-ments that were either crushed and/or forced underground in short order, e.g., the 1999 student protest and the 2006 One Million Signature Campaign. Thus the concept of a movement of movements offers a framework for understand-ing the Green Movement as a rainbow collectivity whose essence, and by implication, formidability, lies in “the power of big numbers” (Bayat, 2013: 21) as well as that of disparate groups—attributes that made it possible to mount street demonstrations of a scale and duration that would rock the Islamic Republic to its foundations.

At the same time, it is the very heterogeneity of a movement of movements that lends it its inclusiveness. Whereas earlier post-revolutionary oppositional movements had been dominated by, for the most part, special interest groups

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focused on single issues—gender discrimination, academic freedom, workers’ rights—the Green Movement, with its diverse constituency and multi-polar voices, set its sights on pursuing a far broader and more ambitious reform agenda, one aimed at institutionalizing political accountability and transpar-ency, the rule of law, citizens’ rights and civic freedoms, in addition to the more specific items in the respective agendas of its constituent groups. What this inclusivity reflects is akin to what Manoranjan Mohanty’s (1998: 65) concept of ‘creative society’ entails, i.e., a historical phase of development within the states of the global South, marked by a widening struggle to create democra-cies and civil societies, one wherein “a large number of potential contradic-tions become articulate and active” as manifest in the agendas of their respective social movements. In the Iranian case, such contradictions—most notably between an established religious-political order that had effectively ‘instrumentalized’ religion as a vehicle for legitimizing its rule and a grass-roots movement bent on dismantling it, and between religious duties and alle-giances and the rights and obligations of citizenship—must be both seen and interrogated as features of a particular historical phase in both the develop-ment of civil society and its ‘tug of war’ with the Islamic Republic.

Consistent with the above description, the Green Movement, as a move-ment of movements, may be seen to have four distinct, albeit interrelated, attributes. The first has to do with the singular way in which heterogeneous social strata coalesced to form a united front with the common aim of mobiliz-ing in opposition to the Islamic Republic. As the post-election demonstrations evinced, with all hope of reform dashed, the student and women’s groups were joined by other social strata, e.g., bazaris and workers and youth groups, in staging a series of demonstrations, some of which, as noted above, drew mil-lions. The slogans—Natarsid Natarsid Ma Hameh Baham Hastim, “Don’t be Afraid, We are All Together,” and Ma Bishomarim, “We are Countless”— chanted by the crowds at this critical juncture suggest that independently of one another, none of these diverse elements would have succeeded in sustain-ing an oppositional movement for anything like the eight months (i.e., from June 2009 to February 2010) that the Green Movement ruled the streets. This momentous success speaks to the ability of disparate groups to seize a per-ceived opportunity—one viewed as real in the run-up to the election but now jeopardized by Ahmadinejad’s victory—to form a movement of movements capable of contesting power. In other words, notwithstanding their different agendas, these groups succeeded in creating an organic and multilayered pro-test movement aimed at recovering the initiative through collective action and enabled by the “imagined solidarities” of millions of defrauded voters (Bayat, 2005: 901). In the final analysis, it was these ‘imagined solidarities’ that enabled



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them to “subjectively construct[]…common interests” (Bayat 2005: 904) around a single aim: that of overturning the results of a fraudulent election.

What this experience reveals is that in the absence of ‘open opportunities’ for mobilization, a people may create their own opportunities—and not merely because they can, but more importantly because “they are compelled to do so,” as, for example, when they believe their sense of justice and moral val-ues has been violated beyond endurance (Beinin and Vairel, 2010: 22; emphases added). In such instances, and when the opportunity is perceived to be ripe, they will most certainly act decisively. It was under such circumstances that millions of Iranians poured onto the streets—in and of itself an act of civil disobedience—chanting “If there was no election fraud, we would not be here,” “Give me back my vote,” and “In my green vote there is no mention of your black name”— the cry of a people who felt compelled to “save the little that [was] left of their republic” (Bashi, 2011: 39). When their best efforts at securing a vote recount were brutally suppressed by the state’s security forces, the protesters consciously turned what had been an assumption of election fraud into a “social fact,” meaning that it was “no longer relevant whether or not the election [had been] rigged” (Dabashi, 2011b: 24). In so doing, they con-sciously created a “potentially revolutionary situation,” plunging the Islamic Republic into an “unprecedented crisis of …legitimacy” and shaking its very foundations (Bashiriyeh, 2010: 62). Indeed, from November 2009 onward—and most notably on 13 Aban Student Day (November 4th) and the Shiite holy day of Ashura (December 26th)—the activists would redirect their efforts to target-ing none other than Iran’s head of state and official face of the Islamic Republic, hence the chants “Death to Khamenei,” “Khamenei is a Murderer, his leader-ship is invalid,” “Iranians would rather die before accepting disgrace” (see bbc News, 2009; Wright 2009). These slogans were accompanied by a call on the part of some groups for an Iranian Republic that would supersede the Islamic Republic, now widely perceived as lacking legitimacy. Herein lies the second characteristic of a movement of movements: its dynamism. Each in its own way represents a “social movement in motion” (Bayat, 2005: 897), one that “winds and snarls like a proliferating vine” (Tilly, 1997: 69)—a hyperactive and dynamic entity whose momentum is irresistible because its proponents are prepared to spare no effort in pursuing the justice and morality denied to them.

The diverse social strata comprising the Green Movement had, in the words of Farzin Vahdat (2009), coalesced into a “Meta class,” one whose constituent parts possessed a profound sense of agency as rights-bearing citizens. The hall-mark of this Meta class, which would sustain the movement of movements, was the “indomitable will to [build] enduring democratic institutions” (Dabashi, 2011: 60). As for the formidable sense of agency that galvanized this movement

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of movements, far from having a single provenance, it had been fostered over the course of decades of political activism, the chief moments of which were the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, the political populism of the Mohammad Mosaddegh government (1953), the 1979 Revolution, and the Khatami reform era (1997–2005). Indeed, even such slogans as “God is Great” and “Death to the Dictator,” issuing from the rooftops, evoked memories of past uprisings. In this light, a movement of movements may be seen as a “home-grown product of a long quest for reform, democracy and rule of law” (Tohidi, 2009), one with “deep roots in the collective psyche of the Iranian people” (Vahdat, 2010). This histori-cal connection, which constitutes a hallmark of a movement of movements, in no way signifies for the actors a simple return to the past as, for example, Slavoj Žižek’s (2009) ‘minimalistic’ view of Iran’s Green Movement as a return to the unfulfilled ideals of the 1979 Khomeini revolution or, as he puts it “the ‘return of the repressed’ of the Khomeini revolution,” might suggest. Rather, it would be appropriated by a cosmopolitan generation of ordinary Iranians determined to make it their own history. This act of appropriation would entail a “displac[ing] and a re-reading of events, places … and desires” (Tahmasebi-Birjani, 2010: 80). Herein lies, according to Hamid Dabashi (2011: 45), one dimension of an “epis-temic shift” driven principally by a new generation, possessed of a sense of polit-ical subjectivity so deep as to manifest itself in a radical political activism, aimed, in this case, at winning democratic rights and freedoms—the sine qua non for a people perceiving itself in the new millennium to be rights-bearing citizens. Thus, as a third characteristic, a movement of movements signifies for Iranians, to borrow Michel Foucault’s (1984) terminology, a history of the present, meaning that while a multiplication or pluralization of historical fragments affects and shapes it in the sense that its origins and contours lie in, and are to be under-stood in terms of, the past, and especially earlier oppositional movements and contention episodes, its agenda reflects the needs and aspirations of the present—of the here and now. Thus, in this sense, a movement of movements is characterized, and must be understood as, a historical and localized revolt against historically specific legacies, modalities and trajectories of government rule.

Confronting this cosmopolitan opposition made up of rights-bearing citi-zens stood a repressive state determined to continue treating them as passive, duty-bound subjects. The ‘tug of war’ that ensued between the two sides illus-trates that state repression cannot be understood simply as an obstacle to mobilization; rather, it invariably generates, in dialectical fashion, ideas, dis-courses, actions, and sensibilities that run counter to it—it creates, in other words, its own opposition. In this sense, as a fourth characteristic, a movement of movements reaps what the repressive state has sown. Thus, when a move-ment of movements is compelled to retreat in the face of state brutality, it does



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not wither away; rather, sustained by its heterogeneity and dynamism, it takes refuge underground awaiting the next opportunity to mobilize—even if it does so in very different circumstances and under a different banner. And while it no longer has a real presence on the street, make no mistake, its demands for social and political rights remain irrepressible. Repression can push it to the sidelines, reduce it to “embers burning under [a layer of] ash” (Vahdat, 2010); but its pervasiveness and multipolarity, products of a long his-torical struggle waged against a repressive state, will ensure that over the long run it finds a way to overcome the forces of repression, no matter how powerful and unrelenting.

Conclusion

This paper has shown that in the absence of open political opportunities to mobilize, oppositional groups may feel compelled to create such opportunities when their sense of justice and morality has been violated beyond endurance; alternatively, they may, on the basis of their particular sociopolitical and his-torical experiences, mobilize when circumstances are perceived to be ripe. In the context of the Middle East, the coercive power wielded by the state allows little scope for mobilization, though such states may fall prey to their own repressive instincts and imperatives, as these tend to create, in dialectical fash-ion, political opposition. In this sense, when a people seizes opportunities to mobilize—and make no mistake, this is rarely the case—it becomes possible to build, as in the Iranian example, a movement of movements capable of unit-ing under a common banner all but the most antagonistic of oppositional groups. Thus, the Green Movement succeeded in accommodating single-issue groups with concerns as diverse as gender discrimination, family law reform and academic freedom, to name but a few. What united them all was the deter-mination to mobilize in order to secure a better future, which for them meant institutionalizing political accountability, the rule of law and political rights and freedoms. In an authoritarian setting such as Iran, this could be achieved only by creating a mega movement, one that embodied the authentic will of the people.

About the author

Navid Pourmokhtari, a holder of a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, is with the Department of Political Science, University of Alberta. His research interests

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lie in comparative politics and international relations, particularly in the con-text of the Middle East, and in international security studies and mass social movements. Pourmokhtari’s most recent works have appeared in Against the Current, Third World Quarterly and International Sociology.

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(2014) “Understanding Iran’s Green Movement as a ‘movement of movements.’” Sociology of...

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